James Harrigan

About

James Harrigan is a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia. His fields of interest include International Trade, Economic Geography, Applied Microeconomics, and East Asian economies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a faculty member, he is involved in graduate education and research, contributing to the department's academic and professional development initiatives.

Research topics

• Business
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Labour economics
• Macroeconomics

Selected publications

• Testing the Theory of Trade Policy: Evidence from the Abrupt End of the Multifiber Arrangement

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2009-05-01 · 84 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Quota restrictions on United States imports of apparel and textiles under the multifiber arrangement (MFA) ended abruptly in January 2005. This change in policy was large, predetermined, and fully anticipated, making it an ideal natural experiment for testing the theory of trade policy. Prices of quota-constrained categories from China fell by 38% in 2005, with smaller declines from other exporters. Prices in unconstrained categories from all countries changed little. We also find substantial qu…

  PublisherDOI

• Skill‐biased heterogeneous firms, trade liberalization and the skill premium

  Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d économique · 2015-08-01 · 81 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We propose a theory that rising globalization and rising wage inequality are related because trade liberalization raises the demand facing highly competitive skill‐intensive firms. In our model, only the lowest‐cost firms participate in the global economy exactly along the lines of Melitz. In addition to differing in their productivity, firms differ in their skill intensity. We model skill‐biased technology as a correlation between skill intensity and technological acumen, and we estima…

  PublisherDOI

• The March of the Techies: Job Polarization Within and Between Firms

  Research Policy · 2020 · 69 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Export prices of U.S. firms

  Journal of International Economics · 2015-05-14 · 63 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The March of the Techies: Technology, Trade, and Job Polarization in France, 1994-2007

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2016-03-01 · 62 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Using administrative employee-firm-level data on the entire private sector from 1994 to 2007, we show that the labor market in France has polarized: employment shares of high and low wage occupations have grown, while middle wage occupations have shrunk. During the same period, the share of hours worked in technology-related occupations ("techies") grew substantially, as did imports and exports, and we explore the causal links between these trends. Our paper is among the first to analyze polariz…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ariell Reshef

  Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

  103 shared

• Farid Toubal

  Université Paris Cité

  88 shared

• Richard Baldwin

  International Institute for Management Development

  19 shared

• Xiangjun Ma

  Liaoning University

  14 shared

• Victor Shlychkov

  12 shared

• Carolyn L. Evans

  Intel (United States)

  8 shared

• Rita A. Balaban

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  5 shared

• Egon Zakrajšek

  Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

  5 shared

Similar researchers at University of Virginia

• Eric Leeperh-56
• Anton Korinekh-43
• John McLarenh-31